Monday 13 August 2018

For the Love of Language



The Spheres, the worlds, they are islands of materia amongst the immaterial. There is much more of nothing than something, out there in the vastness of existence. When the mortal sorcerers summon forth the forces of the void, they are prone to invoking the names of fringe gods who rest on the horizon between Real and Unreal things and calling out to the great abstract entities of worldly forces which drift (un)bodily through the maddening whirls between worlds.

But there are other forces which haunt the spaces between the Spheres, more pervasive and perhaps more dangerous. Language is a living thing, with a life cycle drawn as on planes and dimensions beyond our comprehension. Languages are strange creatures, if creatures they can even be called, which descend into the crude matter of our worlds to procreate and allow the linear time that exists in the Real to shape them somewhat, before they ascend again into the Unreal, the space outside of time, and give back what they have developed to their whole.

The Tongue-Tamer mages of the Carrikhan Islands believe all languages are one language, repeatedly coming back time and time again to the Spheres of Existence and disseminating itself from different vectors. The Tongue-Tamers study language exhaustively, hoping to find a few keystone phrases which will help them truly understand the divine being that is Language.

There are heretic Tongue-Tamers who claim Language is a genus, and that each individual spoken language is a separate entity out in the Unreal: these Tongue-Tamers invariably champion one specific Language at the expense of all others, treating it as a kind of patron which will grant them boons in return for loyal service in the quest for its evolution and elevation. Such Tongue-Tamers were employed by the Graze Imperials, during their quest to stomp out the ugly indigenous languages of the other islands. 

There are all manner of ordinances in the wizards libraries of Irifice concerning the correct way to communicate with Language/s, mostly wheeling and wondering around the inherent paradoxes of talking to creatures in a manner which those creatures are made of. Common consensus tends towards the metaphor of communicating with a man through body parts, and a strict warning that trying to comprehend the motives or even the passing thoughts of Language/s will blast apart the feeble reasoning capabilities of a mortal mind by completely eroding the operational context of an actual, physical universe. A conversation with a Language is a many-layered rabbit hole of metaphor and allegory, quickly losing any concrete foundation for the casual listener.



New Background: Tongue Tamer
The Tongue-Tamer Mages work endlessly to understand the true form of the formless, unlocking myriad mysteries within the linguistics of the otherworldly. In theory the Tongue-Tamers are masters of wordplay and wit, but in practice they tend to be poor communicators with outsiders too their order- it turns out that communicating entirely in a kind of multidimensional double-speak while you're at work can bleed out a little into your social life. Who knew.
Possessions- A set of woolly and uncomfortable robes, stitched full of your favourite words and sentences.
- 1d3 phrase-tomes of exotic languages
- A reading-sceptor, replete with oversized viewing lens on the top
Skills
4 Languages
2 Random Spell
2 Random Spell
2 Astrology
2 Second Sight
Special
You can use your deep and thorough understanding of Languages vectors through this world to tweak it's track for a short time. Use your Languages skill to change the meaning of one word for 1d6 hours. Since you do technically live in an existence formed solely of language this can on occasion affect the physical. 

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